Just some minor problems this week. You'd think sending a postcard home would be easy, wouldn't you? Not so. My local P.O. lady is used to me now, and smiles broadly when I come in, but when I arrived last week with three postcards this was obviously a first and not included in the job training. You can't buy postcards in Wenshan and she'd never had to deal with such things. After a phone conversation lasting at least five minutes, to so...

Onto the third and final postcard from the Wenshan 'birthday' travels. This was the area around Yuanyang, known for its wonderful terraced landscape and the colourfully dressed Yi, Hani and other 'ethnic minorities'.First impressions were not good. Low cloud made visibility absolutely zero, I was informed that there were no buses to where I wanted to go and the local minibus drivers demanded 100 yuan for a 'tour'. Not to be thwarted I set ...

On to the next stage of my Wenshan 'birthday' travels. Jianshui and the phone call to my student, June. Not as easy as it sounds when June's not at home, I'm phoning from a public phone in a little shop and trying to make myself understood by some person, who turned out to be a lodger,  who isn't expecting a call from some weird foreign person. After muttering un-intelligibly for a while, I rang off. Nothing ventured, nothi...

It's been a while since I went to Ba Mei and I've been pretty busy since, trying to help with the classroom methodology teaching which I'll take over with the final graders for a few weeks soon. They're a little reluctant, at present, to project themselves but I'll do what I can to get them moving. I visited Yanshan, where 'Wenshan' airport is located. It boasts a spanking new building with doors proudly marked 'Domestic arrivals&#...

Pits and troughs with the Chinese learning seems to have been the theme for the last couple of weeks. I decided  recently to make a  more concerted effort to study hard to make a bit of progress with this wretched language before I leave China in the not-too-distant future. Theoretically, I have two lessons a week but that rarely happens due to Yolanda's constant last- minute meetings  (real, not excuses) so I'm trying to take more opp...